Lego ‘Fuses’ with Augmented Reality – This Generation of Kids Have it Better Than We Did

Bill Wasinger is an award winning copywriter and consultant with over 25 years experience writing for print, broadcast, and digital media.
He operates his own copy and design firm, Ph Communications, working with a variety of national and regional brands.

Whether as kids, adults or both, most of us have played with Lego bricks at some point in our lives. If you have children, odds are your children play with them now, too (and, as a parent, the odds are even better that you’ve had the pleasure of stepping on a stray Lego with your bare feet, but I digress). And though their product line has expanded exponentially in the last 20 years, according to a recent article on The Verge, those little Danish bricks are now the building blocks of a new augmented reality experience.

The Lego Fusion, which will go on sale in August, lets you take what you physically build on your desk and integrate it into the Fusion app on your tablet. Lego Fusion, which offers Town Master, Create & Race, Battle Towers and Resort Designer sets, lets users build on a Fusion Capture Plate unique to each 200-piece set, then scan what you build using your tablet’s camera to build a virtual replica. From there, the Fusion app converts your creation into a 3D model you can manipulate or race to your heart’s content based on which set you’re using and the related game options.

In addition, users can upload anything they create to join the larger Lego community where others have uploaded their creations. This feature will allow Fusion users to race against other cars, visit other towns, battle other towers and more. And, if you or your child is one of those Lego users who likes to build, tear down and start over, Lego Fusion also saves every design you scan.

While the Fusion app, designed by TT Games, is limited in its scanning scope and geared more toward younger kids, it’s a first step toward a larger scanner that can integrate any design into a 3D game application. Right now, while Lego Fusion is designed to recognize colors and shapes from each set, it will also attempt to identify and render bricks from outside the set.

While only time will tell if the Lego Fusion bricks are just the first step in a new augmented reality world, one thing is for certain; no matter how it fares, Fusion’s virtual creations mean a lot fewer bricks on the floor for parents to step on in the middle of the night.

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A couple of months ago, a Emerj podcast featured Augmate CEO Pete Wassell predicting that the first mainstream uses of Augmented Reality might be a bit more "blue collar" than "Buck Rogers." And now, in addition to Augmate's digital eyeware, a new "Smart Helmet" from Daqri is helping to put AR to work in the workplace, wherever that work site may be.

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